Far right political forces that spread transphobia have grown in many countries in recent years. This article by our American comrades explains what is behind this development. Pitting women against trans people is not a new tactic from the right wing, and it serves a purpose. In pretending that they are somehow defending women’s safety, Trump and other far right politicians are covering for what has really made women less safe: them.
Kelly Bellin, Socialist Alternative (ISA in the United States)
ven before Trump took office for his second term, trans people have been increasingly under attack. In 2024, a record of over 600 state and federal bills were introduced targeting trans rights. Increased transphobia over years has reinforced violence against trans people. Then, Trump took office and launched an onslaught of legal and ideological attacks on trans lives.
Socialists have a particular duty at this time to stand firm in support of trans rights, and to explain exactly why it is that trans people are being used as a scapegoat by Trump and the Republican Party. This article is a part of an ongoing series of material in which we will explore a socialist approach to gender liberation in more depth.
What is gender & Where does it come from?
Socialist Alternative supports the right for everyone to explore and determine their gender identity. Biological sex, as assigned at birth, is a flawed categorization in the first place, but regardless does not determine one’s gender. Gender identity is a kind of category of roles, characteristics, and aspects of how we relate to each other, and the way we understand gender is constructed by capitalist society. We’re all taught from a young age what it should mean to be a boy or a girl and these conceptions of gender identity are ruthlessly enforced throughout life—from the bathrooms we’re allowed to use, to the roles we’re expected to play in our families.
These expectations are bad for all of us. Repressed gender identity is associated with drastically higher suicide rates and mental health crises. But even for those who are conditioned to express and accept behavior which is generally aligned with our gender, gender norms under capitalism are still nearly always repressive. Women and girls are taught that our bodies are for the sight and use of men, to set aside our own wellbeing, to obsess over unrealistic and unhealthy beauty standards, among countless other damaging features of being a woman under capitalism. Boys and men are taught to ignore their feelings, that expression of emotion or weakness are failures, and to remain confined to the narrow expectations of masculinity. In this way, gender norms normalize certain expectations of people, which become a source of so much suffering: repressed feelings, disordered eating, domestic abuse, and so on.
These gender roles serve a purpose for the ruling class. The foundations of capitalist gender (women’s oppression) are fundamental to how the world is organized: the bosses versus the workers, the 1% versus the 99%, the billionaire class versus the working class. This is because the origin of gender oppression is essential to the origin of class society thousands of years ago. In short, the control of women was how the newly-developing and male-dominated ruling class sought to pass down their wealth and know that they were passing said wealth down to children that they conceived. Controlling women’s sexuality was essential to the ruling class even coming into existence.
People who don’t identify with the gender that capitalism has assigned to them, via their sex, obviously have existed all along. There’s an extensive history of gender queerness to demonstrate this, including inspiring subcultures. There are also entire industries which have profited massively off the repressed position of so-called “gender deviance.” The medical treatment of intersex people, who are born with multiple sex characteristics and have been subjected to brutal surgeries throughout history, is a stark demonstration that capitalist gender is not in the interest of human life. Instead, it exists to reinforce the relations in society where working people are subjugated continuously to various forms of oppression.
Steps forward over the last decades in regards to consciousness around trans people flow most centrally from the victories of movements for LGBTQ and trans rights. Mass struggle and crucial victories, such as movements against sexual harassment and for gay marriage rights, have had a positive impact on how people think about gender as well as an increased rejection in gender and sexuality based violence and oppression. This has made more and more people feel comfortable exploring their gender identity and has made trans and genderqueer people feel more confident in coming out.
What makes you a woman?
The oppression of women is rooted in capitalist social values, not biology. This is also shown in that we are oppressed regardless of whether we are each individually capable of giving birth to children (even if that was essential to the origin of women’s oppression). And yet the relentless drumbeat of the reactionary right is that trans people are a threat to women: trans women using the restroom is a threat of violence, trans women playing sports is an unfair advantage, and trans children are the product of failed mothering or even parental abuse.
The biggest hurdle facing women in sports is underfunding and rampant sexism, not trans athletes. It is well documented that bathrooms and locker rooms are dangerous: for trans women forced to use men’s facilities. And that restricting the gender expression of children leads them to try to kill themselves. Socialist Alternative supports gender expression and rights, such participation in sports, bathroom use, and free, high quality gender affirming care.
The premise of fearing trans women is based on the idea that they are either sexual predators, or men attempting to gain access to women’s spaces. In fact, there are ideologies of feminism which fall into this trap and do the work of the the ruling class by promoting the idea that trans women—who face such oppressed conditions under capitalism that at every age they are more likely to die given their trans identity—are enduring this to have access to women’s spaces for nefarious reasons. Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminism promotes transphobia and opposes the united struggle of women and the LGBTQ community, a gift to the reactionary right. Unfortunately, as transphobia increases, the dangers of new forms of divisions within progressive movements are likely to develop in the coming years, with women and others in the LGBTQ community pressured to scapegoat trans people. Accepting the scarcity of liberation rather than fighting for all of us will only further divide and weaken our struggle.
Being a woman is not confined to our fertility, and our identities certainly shouldn’t be determined by billionaire men who themselves utilize hormones and treatments to affirm their own gender identities. Elon Musk’s hair transplants, for example, are gender-affirming care, as well as his other cosmetic procedures tailored to make him present in a more masculine way than his body and appearance have naturally developed.
Pitting women against trans people is not a new tactic from the right wing, and it serves a purpose. In pretending that they are somehow defending women’s safety, Trump and the billionaires are covering for what has really made women less safe: them. In reality, the same forces attacking LGBTQ rights are simultaneously waging unrelenting attacks against women, in particular on reproductive rights. It’s precisely this kind of dynamic, which has appeared throughout history, which allows the ruling class to defuse the power of the working class and movements.
If gender is a capitalist construct, should it be thrown out?
The problem is not identity, it’s the system. Under capitalism, oppressive gender constructs will always exist—we can win progressive reforms, but they will always be clawed back by the ruling class until we remove the material basis for oppression itself. As socialists, we believe that only united struggle of the incredibly diverse working class can overthrow capitalism and lay the basis for a new society. And that’s what we need to actually live without sexism, racism, and various gender and sexuality based oppressions. We fight for a socialist world which allows genuine human connection, exploration and innovation. What will happen to gender and identity then would be a product of that kind of society.
Just as a new world won’t automatically be socialist unless we fight for it, our movements now won’t automatically represent the interests of all of us unless we fight for it. We fight for trans rights and a program for trans liberation as it is essential to a socialist program for all working people.
